No Payroll Tax Increases
It appears that there is some agreement between liberal blogs and President Bush: Payroll tax hikes should not be part of any "solution" to the social security "crisis." Increasing revenue now...
View ArticleBolton Nominated for UN Ambassadorship
This is crazy. Bush has nominated John Bolton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton's take on the UN:At a 1994 panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association Bolton...
View ArticleSecret Money in Social Security
Jeff Birnbaum in today's Washington Post discusses the secrecy surrounding the financiers of the privatization fight. Conservatives in particular are using 501(c)4s to run their guerilla networks -...
View ArticleChoice Quotes on Social Security
This is language I like to see: Susan Milligan, Boston Globe: "The president is committed to these private accounts," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday on ABC's "This Week.""I'm committed...
View ArticleRepublican Plans
The Post wrote-up the competing Republican Senate plans for replacing Social Security. None of these are worth pursuing, compromising with, or even conceding as desirable in the abstract.To date, the...
View ArticleRepublicans and African Americans
Any incursions Republicans make into the Black vote would be devastating both for African Americans and the Democratic Party. Mehlman continues to peddle his snake oil though, claiming "no matter how...
View ArticleMinimum Wage Votes
Both Kennedy's and Santorum's minimum wage bills came to a vote today, and both were defeated - Kennedy's by a handful of Republican votes, Santorum's by all Democrats present and 17 Republicans. The...
View ArticlePlease, No
This is from yesterday's New York Times, and hence "old news," but I just want to ask a personal favor of the "centrists:" please don't compromise. The Republicans simply don't believe in Social...
View ArticleTroop Armor
What can I say? I didn't get through the entire New York Times yesterday. Here's their article on troop body armor, the acquisition of which was horribly mismanaged by the administration. 200 soldiers...
View ArticleProgress for America Rolls Out $2 Million Campaign
Details in the NYT. Just a partisan Republican organization using secret corporate money to support the administration's dishonest partisan agenda. Nothing to see here.
View ArticleDemocracy Corp Offers Bad Advice
I agree with Josh Marshall and Max Sawicky (particularly Max) : Carville and Greenberg need to shut the fuck up.The only Social Security reform agenda I would support is one that would seek to make the...
View ArticleWall Street and Privatization
In what appears to be an ironic follow up to yesterday's article, Jeff Birnbaum writes in today's Post on Wall Street's apparently tepid support for social security privatization. Waddell & Reed,...
View ArticleGOP Senate Extends Bankruptcy Protection to Terrorists
AP reporting:In the first abortion-related test of the new Congress, the Republican-controlled Senate turned back a Democratic effort Tuesday to bar violent protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid...
View ArticleHomeland Security Through Obscurity
The NYT from over the weekend. The administration is contemplating removing security placards from train cars that warn about dangerous chemical contents, ostensibly to make it harder for terrorists to...
View Article"Moderate" Republicans Squishy on Tax Cuts
Or so they say. It's unlikely that the moderates have grown a backbone this winter, so their nominal opposition to starving government of revenue won't have much of an impact. At least fiscal sanity...
View ArticleRepublican Assault on AARP
Laura Meckler of the Associated Press neatly details the Republican strategy for fighting AARP. Bush claims that the AARP has no dog in the privatization fight, that "nothing changes" for anyone over...
View ArticleBottom Dropping Out of Privatization
Some harsh headlines for the privatization camp.David Espo, Personal Accounts Tank in Polls, GOP Says, Associated Press, March 9, 2005. The National Republican Congressional Committee commissioned 14...
View ArticleLugar on Bolton
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar is"going to reserve any comments about the appropriateness or not of the president's choice [of John Bolton for UN Ambassador].""Lugar wants to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bolton's Last Confirmation Hearing
John Bolton was confirmed as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security on May 8, 2001, by a vote of 57-43. He was voted out of the then-evenly split Foreign Relations...
View ArticleNew Cases of Private Information Theft
Lexis Nexis's Seisint unit was breached, with ~32,000 names, addresses, social security numbers, and driver license numbers captured. An indeterminate but "sizable" number of customers at DSW Shoe...
View ArticleSocial Security Testimony
The opening Congressional hearings in the Social Security debate did not go well for the administration. Comptroller General David Walker stated that Social Security "does not face an immediate...
View ArticleEffects of D.C.'s First-Time Home-Buyer Tax Credit
The Washington Post writes on a new report [PDF] released by the Fannie Mae Foundation about the success of the D.C. First-Time Home-Buyer Individual Income Tax Credit. The tax credit of $5,000 is...
View ArticleSocial Security's Safety Net for Women
Dr. Bitch has a great post about how women’s choices early in their careers have major long-term effects – on everything from the ability to compete in the job market and earn a competitive salary, to...
View ArticleNational Sales Tax: Flat Out Bad Idea
I’m annoyed but not surprised at the way George Will writes about Rep. John Linder’s bill to enact a national consumption tax, and do away with the IRS and K Street along with it. Of course, he...
View ArticleRhetoric
Digby highlights a rhetorical trick. The Roberts Committee Report almost exclusively quotes material to criticize Joe Wilson, using paraphrases to present counter positions. The effect is to subtly...
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